Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/5308334. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage Category: F/M, M/M, Multi Fandom: Homestuck Relationship: Eridan_Ampora/The_Condesce, Eridan_Ampora_&_Feferi_Peixes, Eridan_Ampora/ Grand_Highblood, The_Condesce/Eridan_Ampora/Grand_Highblood, The Condesce/Grand_Highblood Character: Eridan_Ampora, The_Condesce, Grand_Highblood Additional Tags: Gillplay, Bulges_and_Nooks, Size_Difference, Age_Difference, Sexual Violence, Non-Consensual, Alternate_Universe, Bad_Ending, Double Penetration, Multiple_Penetration, Dubcon_or_Noncon_Moirallegiance, mindfuckery, harem_fantasies, Piercings, Genital_Piercing, Non-Consensual Oral_Sex, Non-Consensual_Body_Modification Series: Part 2 of Homesmut_fills_:_Box_of_Bad Stats: Published: 2015-11-29 Updated: 2016-09-19 Chapters: 3/4 Words: 18297 ****** Royal treatment ****** by oncewewerezombies Summary Condesce or Grand Highblood or both/Any, bath them and bring them to me A character is captured by the Empire but instead of being treated roughly, the rebel gets a spa treatment. At some point (maybe right away, maybe only at the last minute) the character realizes they are being prepared for sex. It's up to you whether the rape ever happens or if the character escapes/is rescued in time. Notes Non-sgrub AU: BAD END. ***** Chapter 1 ***** As much as you believe in Feferi and you believe in the rebellion, you have not been treated as your blood deserves (as you deserve because of who you are, you are a god damn prince) in a very long time. You have spent a lot of time in tiny spaceships that were only truly good for planethopping within a sun system and using them to go between sun systems and galaxies. This has meant sleeping in stale sopor for cycles, rationing yourself on tiny scraps of canned shit meant for lowbloods and rubbing shoulders with fucking scum in order to buy ammunition and supplies for the few fighters the rebellion actually had. Fef wants helmsmen to be treated better and refuses to enslave them until Eq can make a removable helmsrig, so right now that means using rigs that are mostly dependant on nuclear not psionic power which means puddlejumpers at best. You’re still looking for Sollux who disappeared at Ascension, grudgingly on your side of things, and Aradia had been dead before that thanks to the revenge spiral that Vriska had locked the lowbloods of your clade into. No other psionics that you knew personally enough to give a shit about. Kar and Gam are right up there in the Privy Council, despite Kar’s sickening mutant blood – he’s quick, he wants to pap the world and he’s brought the lowbloods to you as much as Tav has. You still can’t get over the fucking wings, those things are just ridiculous. The Summoner and Sufferer Reborn, standing beside the Heiress. Terezi fights for justice for every troll in the courtblock and you’re pretty sure she’s one cackling misstep of impartiality for the wrong troll away from culling, despite Vris’s standing in the wings ready to whisk her away from trouble. Not everyone of your clade made it off the surface of Alternia at Ascension. Aradia died, Sollux disappeared, Kanaya vanished into the depths of the brooding caverns. You wish sometimes you could hear from her, her cool headed sense would be useful in reigning Vris the fuck in sometimes. Whatever. She’s gone. She might as well be dead, no jadebloods ever leave the Mother Grub’s side. You’ve gotten over your adolescent genocide kick and are paying nominal lip service to Fef’s idea of equality across the hemospectrum; for now, you’re reserving judgement and wondering just how that is going to shake down with some of the older highbloods you know will survive the change in regime (if you win – of course you’re going to win, what sort of defeatist nonsense is that shit). Your knowledge of military tactics combined with Leijon’s hunter practicality and Vantas’ out of the box thinking have managed to keep the rebellion (and Fef) alive and one skip ahead of the drones and laughsassins. You’re not winning, but you haven’t lost yet either. Your rebellion is a parasite, an edge hunter, sniping from the corners and living off the refuse of the Empire that one day Feferi Peixes will rule. You’ve sold your jewellery and booty from your many campaigns of FLARPing and you’re down to just your one quadrant ring, your rubellite moirail diamond on your left hand. You’d rather die than sell it, Fef gave it to you when you were three sweeps old. Your name is Eridan Ampora and when your spaceship was captured by the forces of the reigning Empress, you had thought you were going to be executed immediately as a traitor to Alternia. That is not what fucking happened. You are currently reclining in a chill salt water pool that is all you have wanted for at least a sweep and everything feels wrong but you do not know what is making your fins twitch. Maybe this is what happens to high blood prisoners? Maybe this is what your blood would net you, if you were still serving under Her Imperial Condescension and joined the Imperial Military College like any other post-Ascension seadweller with any skill or ambition. If you hadn’t taken your moirail’s lead, and followed her offplanet to fence with the Empress. If you hadn’t. If you’d been able to do anything, something, but Feferi was the Heiress and she was always going to fight the Empress, there wasn’t any other choice and you were her moirail. You stood with her, or you broke your diamond and you need her. She’s a part of you. They’d found your little skittercrawler of a spaceship and shot out your support core, left you scrambling for a suit which you’d just managed to get into and seal before the rest of the oxygen departed your tiny vessel. You’d wanted – you’d wished – your last message to your moirail was something meaningful, not the useless mission blather that you’d sent her. Something that said how much you love her. Nope. You’d just sent off a message saying that you’d bought the containers of grubloaf and other supplies, and that Eq should come by with the big ship to pick them up while you went on to arrange another deal, this time for armaments. You’re pretty fucking sure that the shitty oliveblood you’d been going to see had sold you out to the Empire. They’d definitely known you were in there, otherwise they would have just blown you clear out of the void. They’d done it before to other ships of the rebellion, they’d do it again. But not you. Why? Your ties to Fef, maybe. You’d wish she was here, but this would be the worst place for her to be. Right on her ancestress’ ship, in the middle of the battleground. Oh god, you hope she’s safe somewhere and that Kar can keep her from coming to try and rescue you. Maybe he can get Gam to sit on her or something, use that purple strength for something useful. You’d say get Eq to do it, but one order, one hint from the Heiress and he’d roll over like a welltrained woofbeast. In this case, it might have been useful if he hadn’t got over that seemingly bonedeep enmity regarding seadwellers; at least you know he still hates you, maybe to keep you out of his hair, he’d help keep her contained. You need her not to be here, where the Empress can reach out and grab her. More than anything, you need to be able to think of her safe and well and running, working to bring about something better, something new. To make the Empire something that’s all hers. Maybe you’re not going to live to see it. It’s weird, being treated like your blood deserves for the first time in ages. None of your clade are respectful in the slightest like they should be. Like their blood should be to yours. You’re pretty much at the top and none of them seem to care. They’re not even respectful to Fef...well. Zahhak. But he’s a sweaty disgusting mess, and he’s still not respectful to you, even though you’re an Orphaner and higher on the spectrum than he is. Fuck. This is what you’ve been trying to get over so Feferi won’t give you that disappointed look she gets, but it’s so tempting to just go back to the way things were before you all decided, hey, let’s be fucking rebels and turn the Empire upside down, see if we like it better when the whole thing’s been shaken so hard pieces are falling out the sides like a grub’s abused chewtoy. It’s. Nice. This is nice. You can’t shut up the part in the back of your pan that is insistent that everything is going to go wrong very bad, very quick and you’re actually sure it’s right. Your paranoia saved your hide consistently in FLARP and in the real world it’s proven to be a benefit more than once. If only you’d listened a little more to the warning niggle in the back of your mind about the oliveblood and sent Vris instead; you wouldn’t be here. You’ve been fed and pampered, cleaned up to a fair shine, and every lowblood scrapes and calls you Lord Ampora. Something is wrong, something is very fucking wrong indeed. They even did your glubbing claws, honed to a lethal sharpness in proper fleet officer style. You never managed to do this good a job when you’d done it in hive, before you left the planet. “Lord Ampora?” An officious cerulean like your once-kismesis comes out, averting her eyes from your naked hide as you soak in the salt water, feeling your stunted gills flutter and ease the cool stuff through your opercula. Sweet sainted Emissary, it feels so fucking good. It’s better than the fish you’ve already stripped down to fins and nothing more, currently swallowing the last bite of bone and sweet meat as you wait for the uniformed attendant to tell you all of her message. Your sharp teeth finish it off easily, and you lick your fingers thoughtfully as you wait for the blueblood to give you her message. “There are f-fresh clothes waiting for you, when you are f-finished relaxing. Her Imperious Condescension was adamant about you not needing to rush.” “I’ll be right out. I’d never keep your Empress waiting.” She gives you a look, and you’re bluffing on a losing hand and you know it but something in her eyes chills you, as cold as you are by blood. It’s pity. Not pale or red, but it’s some sort of horrible platonic pity and your hindbrain screams. The trap’s been set and you’re putting your frond in it, it’s going to snap, it’s going to break you... “Get th’ fuck out.” “Of-f course, Lord Ampora. She leaves and she doesn’t bow. Time to set the trap off, no point waiting around to see what’s going to get worse. You heave yourself out of the pool and pat yourself dry before going to see what clothes have been left. Swallowing hard, you stroke fingers down the black Imperial Fleet Academy uniform that is waiting for you. This is what you gave up when you jumped ship and went down the river with your moirail and once it had been all you’d wanted – besides the death of all land dwellers. You breathe in deep, and then put it on. Brush your hair so the violet streak is a brazen statement, slide your quadrant ring onto your hand, check your poise once in the mirror and then knock on the door to be escorted to your doom. Doom is a fuchsia and gold tiled court room. The throne almost dominates the Empress, it shines like the Immediatroll photos of a six sweep old girl that has just discovered Blingee. It glitters on every inch. It’s ugly. You wish you had your scarf but without it, you just hold your ramrod straight spine even straighter, standing tall. Chin up. You wonder how much of a farce your death is going to be, maybe in this you’ll match your ancestor. These aren’t the clothes you would have chosen to wear at your death, they feel like a lie and you would rather have your own as ragged as they had become. You clench your fist around your moirail ring and shut Fef out of your mind; she’ll grieve but you hope she won’t do anything stupid. They have to keep her from doing anything stupid. You’re a noble, a prince – but she’s the Heiress and more important than you’ll ever be. She’s the hope for something better, some day. Without her, there’s nothing. The Empress is all coiled muscle and serpentine hair as she steps off the dais surrounding her throne. The culling fork in her hand isn’t a surprise. Maybe this is it. You brace yourself, expecting golden tines through your chest any moment. If she’s as good as Fef (she’s probably better), she could have pinned you as soon as you walked through the door. You want to step back as she advances, her grin bright and terrible and every inch of her dripping with gold ornamentation, but you stand your ground. Putting your fist to the left side of your chest, you bow slightly, a dip of your shoulders and head and just enough to observe the niceties. “Whale, whale, whale. Hello, small fry.” She circles you like a shark, the 2x3dent she’s holding glitters. You stare straight ahead; if she’s going to kill you, there’s no reason to act like a wriggler. You fought and you lost. You’ve killed enough trolls to know what sort of death you’d prefer, and it didn’t involve whining and rolling around begging. You’ll go down underneath her fucking trident like a seadweller. “So you’re my rayplaicement’s moray eel. Hmmm. I fink she could have done betta.” Don’t react. Don’t move. She chuckles and then she touches you. One cold hand cupping your face, claws just caressing the skin of your cheeks. Unable to stop yourself, your fins flutter distress, fear, flicking down and back at her touch. It’s wrong and it makes your stomach turn; is she trying to pap you, do something pale? The thought of being touched by anyone except Fef like that is fucking sickening. “You’re trying to be so brayve, buoy.” Her fingers tighten. Something stings on a cheek, you think she’s just cut you with the tip of a nail and her eyes bore into yours like she can fuck your thinkpan like Vris mindfucks lowbloods. “It won’t kelp you.” She lets go, steps away and then sweeps back with the trident extended in one hand to hit you across the stomach with the shaft of it. You feel it crunch into your lower thoracic struts and then you’re lifted, it’s something like flying before you hit the floor on your back. You gasp for breath and roll to the side blindly but not before she follows up her bludgeoning strike with a kick to what she’s already damaged with a pointed shoe. In the end, it’s barely even a fight. You’re a range attack type of troll, sticking to the Crosshairs by preference and using them to blow your opponent out of the water from a distance. If you’d really had to engage in more face to face combat, you’d used swords. Hand to hand had never been a priority. The trident is a pole arm and you’re unarmed and unarmoured, she fights much closer than you’re used to and she fights dirty. She’s older, bigger, faster and there’s still an ancestral reaction rattling around your head that insists that it’s traitorous to fight the Empress. That you should tilt your head back, bare your throat and submit to her wishes. When she’s done with you, your left fin is torn and leaking violet blood down the side of your face, your glasses are cracked and you choke out a whining gasp as she puts her foot on your hand and grinds down with her heel. You won’t beg. The thought is hazy in your mind that you won’t beg her not to break your fingers, but you just whimper instead and she looks satisfied, her full lips curling into a fuchsia smirk. Oh sand and waves, you want your moirail, to have her cool hands on your face and her delighted giggle in your ears. You want to be safe and not hurting like you got sucked to the bottom of a rolling wave and dragged around like clothes in a spin-washer before being slammed onto the beach. You’re beaten, exhausted and she kneels next to you and puts down the trident. Grabs you by one lightning bolt horn and pulls you up and around as you struggle to focus your eyes. Maybe she’s going to kill you now. Her lips are pursed as she looks down at you, obviously considering something. Oh, what now? You almost hope she sends your head to Fef – that way, at least, she’ll know there’s no need for rescue. That all there would be left would be vengeance. You hope she understands that the best vengeance you could think of would be that she takes this bitch’s fucking empire from her and puts her head on a pike as a trophy. “Walu’ll I do with you, sprat?” Her hand on your horn should be a calming thing and you hiss at her through bared fangs as she hauls your head about, making your pan ring with echoes of pale-not-pale. It hurts. The Empress’ face is something like you think Fef will look like, maybe, one day, but the thoughtfully cold expression is one you fucking hope your moirail will never make. “Moby I should have a nice public execution – but I don’t want to mako you some kind of martyr. I have one of those alreeldy.” She shakes you by the horn and you make a mewling noise, unable to keep it back as your pan explodes in bursts of fuzzy light. You try to claw at her and she just slaps you down like she’s not even thinking about you, absent minded and uncaring. You can’t hurt her. You didn’t even lay one scratch on her. Some warrior and military troll you are. You are such a failure. When she stands, she drags you by your hair after her as she strides to her throne, fuchsia painted claws scraping your skull and strong fingers curled firmly into the roots. Trying to dig your heels in, you are a hooked fish as far as she’s concerned and she carries you with her easily. Sprawling on the steps of the dais, you look up as she takes her seat in her throne. Sets one foot on your shoulder, and gives you that considering look again that makes your fins sweep down and tight against the sides of your neck. Everything inside your thinkpan is throbbing and you almost wish she’d skip to the culling. “Eridan Ampora. Traytor to Alternia, moirail of my most cowardly Heiress yet.” The tip of her shoe lifts your chin and you gaze up the long legs of Her Imperial Condescension as she smiles terribly, lips parting to reveal a wealth of fangs. There a trolls across the Empire who would kill to be in your place right now and you’re a fucking mess. “Baycause I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for pretty wrigglers,” oh no, no what, “I’m gonna give you one last chance to surf yoar Empress.” No. Oh no. This can’t be real. “You have got to be fuckin’ kidding me,” you exhale shakily, and you watch dumbfounded as she starts to peel out of the black bodysuit with its tyrian Peixes symbol to reveal the flushed pink opercula of her gills. Oh, she’s not kidding. There’s no room for playing around when you’re the Empress. Lifting yourself up on one hand, you try to crawl down the stairs and get away from her and whatever her plans are, but you can still smell the faint tendrils of rising concupiscent pheromones to your growing distress. She skewers your wrist to the steps of her dais with one lunge of her trident and you scream for her now as the middle tine goes straight through your flesh and deep into the stone below. Oh god, it burns, it hurts! While you thrash like a wounded fish, she reaches down and starts to worm your moirail ring off your pinioned hand. “No!” You try to claw her, bite her to keep it, but the gold gives up its grip on your flesh and she studies the thing most precious to you for a moment and then throws it aside like it’s nothing. Trash. Your face is wet and you’re surprised to find you’re crying, violet- tinted tears sliding down your cheeks. “Aw, don’t cry yet, bay-b. There’s so much mora coming that you’re gonna wish you’d saved them for that.” She pulls a gutting knife from her hip and slices the uniform she’s given you right up the back. Every movement of the blade nicks you in the process, leaves noble violet blood spilling across your still adolescent gray skin. Your second pupation had been at least a sweep away, how did you ever think you could run a rebellion? Strong hands with their fuschia-tipped claws get in the black cloth of the uniform and rip it further apart, you try and writhe but you’re pinned and every agonizing pulse from your wrist reminds you of just how she’s done it. The golden shaft scrapes between your bones, and her claws drag wounds into your back, your hips. You’re shuddering. Shaking. All you’ve got left covering your body is scraps around your wrists and calves, the rest is remnants on the floor. She lifts your hips. She lifts your hips. You are not interested, your bulge is tucked up tight and your nook is dry. A cool hand smoothes its way down your back, running along the small fin that rises between your shoulderblades and then down. Down. Clawed fingers delicately smooth over your ass. She’s the only one besides Fef that would be colder than you, and you shudder at the conflicting message of that almost familiar cool on your skin and what’s touching you and why. You try to slam your thighs shut, and a knee wedges in between them. You’re on your face on hard tile, one knee propped up awkwardly on the stairs while agony throbs in your wrist. The Empress inserts her knee further between your thighs and a weak snarl comes from your lips. It’s so wrong, it’s all so wrong. “Don’t be a shelly guppy now, sprat.” The scent of her pheromones is like a haze on the air and you’re choking on them. “Get off me.” Her hand is on your ass, and you stiffen further as her claws trail down the inside of your thigh and then down. Between. A cold touch on the closed sheath of your nook. You feel like you’ve never been less aroused in your life, while her thumb slides over your sheath, icecold on that sensitive, vulnerable skin. “Who would want a dried up fish like you?” She spanks you like a lusus with a wriggler, one hand landing heavy on your rump and you grunt, unable to stop yourself as the trident almost wobbles. Sending shockwaves of agony up your arm as gold grates against bone. You’re going to vomit, and you think somewhere in the back of your head what a waste that would be of the first real food you’ve had for cycles. “Don’t wharu yourshellf, sprat. You’re gonna open up just beautifishily for me. You’re knot the finst oyster I’ve pried open.” You don’t believe her. There is no way she could do such a thing. Everyone always said you’d pail anything that passed, that you’d jump into any proffered quadrant with needy desperation. But this, you can not feel anything concupiscent for a troll who’s so close to your moirail. For this. You feel hate, but it’s platonic. You could not ever feel pity for this monster. There is no way she can make you open up enough that she could succeed in pailing you. You are so dreadfully, terribly wrong about that. Your moiral, you want your moirail, it hurts. Your mouth hangs uselessly slack, keening escaping thinly as another coil or ten of Imperial bulge works its way inside your tight and narrow nook. You weren’t built for this. Nothing was built for this. Her bulge is monstrous, a mess of coiling tentacles and tendrils and she seems to be determined on forcing every last one of them inside you. “Buoy, you gonna regret it if you don’t raylax remora.” Another coil, slick and cold. You whimper instead of scream as you feel something split between your thighs. “Nice tight nook,” the Empress whispers into your ear, before she bites gently at your earfin. You try to still the instinctual fluttering of distress and pain, so it doesn’t tear under her fangs. She pinches your grubleg scar on one side and you chirp, instincts trying to make this black, let it become ok, that place where Vris had gotten you so pain and pleasure were almost the same thing. Get your body with the program, you’re being pailed by a monster oh god it hurts. “Gonna mako you spill your colour all over my bulge, guppy.” She’s pulled the trident out of your flesh so that you’re an easier doll to play with, and you’re leaking violet blood all over her arm as she sits back on the steps and brings you with her. The hand she’d tridented hangs uselessly at your side, bleeding violet and aching with every tiny movement. You’re almost cradled in her lap, your claws of your one good hand digging pinpricks into her thighs. Her hand tangles with your bulge, your body stupid and trying desperately for one last pail in the face of death. Oh god, you hope she kills you after this. You wished that you’d managed to get her to do it when she’d been having fun with knocking you around the throneroom, just like a purrbeast with a squeakcritter. One hand curls around your squirming bulge while she fills you with the writhing tentacles that have become the cause of all your newest nightmares and you groan sharply while she strokes you. Your broken glasses are hanging off your face by one arm, and you can’t see anything clearly, it’s a blur. You don’t want to see anything. You want to stop knowing everything, to stop feeling. Inside, you can feel her polluting you, crawling inside and you hiccup helplessly as she fills you up in every crevice. Deep cold seeping into you and you cringe as she guides the tip of your bulge back between the pair of your tangled thighs so it can ease into her ice cavern of a nook. “Ffffuck!” You’re gagging, panting and she just laughs as your claws dig into her skin, all nice and freshly sharpened in proper Navy officer style. Her fangs dig into the back of your neck in a kismetic hatebite, something that would be proper fucking arousing with the right troll and you gasp, trill. Oh no oh please no. Her laugh is low and dirty, thrumming with seadweller subsonics and it’s almost like another caress on your skin, your gills. Her hands are all over you while her anemone-bulge with all its parts fills you to a point beyond pain and her nook squeezes at the long coil of your frilled bulge where she’s put it inside her. “Gonna make you my pail, guppy. Fill you up with Imperial colour,” she croons and shifts you on her lap like your weight is nothing. To her, it probably isn’t. Everyone is surprised by Fef’s strength when she shows it too. She can haul a skywhale if she sets her mind to it, it’s no wonder her Ancestress is the same. You choke as she fingers your gillslits and gurgle something desperate and agonized as she slowly pushes a digit inside. Inside you, where it’s wet and cold and so vulnerable, and you freeze, try not to let your gills flutter with your gulping distress. Oh god, she’s inside you. “God, please no, don’t,” you wheeze and you can’t fucking stop yourself from begging no matter how much you scream at yourself to be strong. You can’t. Not with her fingers playing delicately with your gills and opercula on your sides, with the radiating agony coming from between your legs. You give up, you give in, you surrender. “P-please, Empress.” Her fingers hesitate in their movement, and slowly slide out and you breathe a little more easily. Her mouth is ice on your skin and she nips at you, works her tongue along the nape of your neck. Desperately hoping to appease, you croon, you trill, you hear yourself make all the sounds that a beaten troll might make to appease their kismesis when they had not been the victors. She croons back at you flushsounds, and you wince but you gaspingly try to return them. Oh god, someone kill you, you want to die. Fef, you want Fef, you want your moirail, you want her to stroke your hair and help you get clean, you want to wash every moment of this from your skin. This is nothing you have ever wanted. She pulls your thigh to one side and makes you look down at yourself, where your nook is split open and full of her writhing tyrian purple tentacles. There is a curve of your bulge visible where she’s led it underneath you both to plunge back into her icy cavern of a nook, your grey skin is dripping with fluids. Tyrian and violet, mixing together, and you want to vomit at the sight. Your stomach is a distended lump and you can see, oh god oh fuck, you can see her bulges moving together inside you, underneath your skin. Like something living is trapped inside you and you gag over her fingers as she shoves them into your mouth, salt-bitter taste from what she’s scooped up from your dripping slit, pushing them down to the back of your mouth. Fuck, you want to bite her, you could shear her fingers off at the knuckle with your shark teeth but you don’t dare. Oh fuck you, you fucking coward, you want to bite her, you can feel your jaw creaking with the strain, why don’t you just bite her? Be done with it? Maybe she’d kill you then, maybe this would stop. Instead you make a hideous gagging sound and let her fuck your mouth with her fingers the same way her bulge is currently fucking your aching nook. You’re drooling around her fingers, tasting your own slurry on them as her hooked claws press delicately against the back of your mouth, and you taste sweet-salt blood as she cuts you in the soft places of your palate and your tongue. “Water mess you are,” the Empress croons into the frill of your earfin, and her cold tongue traces a path over that sensitive skin. She surrounds you, she’s bigger, older, stronger, how did you ever fucking think you could rebel against her? Fuck, FUCK, you can’t, oh god fuck, please, Fef, you feel your back arch as the cold mass of tentacles inside your nook stroke against your seedflap, pressing on your shameglobes inexorably. You choke on her fingers and you feel your nook stretch, cold material sliding down the inside of your thighs. Her bulges move in slow coils inside you, shifting in rhythms and hollowing you out inside. “Not quite the raybellious little wriggler anymoray, huh? Just somewharu for me to put my bulge. Mmm. Gonna mess you up, buoy. You hooked so fin an’ all, in your lil’ uniform. Liked seeing you in my colours, fingerling. Pretty little pupa that you are; bet you woulda been a credit to my surfice.” Her fingers pull out of your mouth with a pop, and you gasp for breath. You can feel your gills fluttering uselessly in the air, on your neck and on your sides. Drool coats your chin, tinted a deeper violet with your own blood and slurry, she’s destroyed you. You came in looking like an Imperial officer- cadet, washed and clean and spruced up to match your rank, and now you’re. You’re. A fucking whore. You’re going to be an Imperial bucket and you can’t stop yourself from shaking in her lap as she uses you, pulls at your hair and fills you with her bulge. “Gonna use you up in a diffinite wave now.” You can feel her smile against your throat as you gasp; trying vainly to adjust to what you desperately hope is the last inch of bulge she can insert into you. This has to be it, all she’s fucking got. There can’t be anymore. “Gonna play the anglerfish with my weedy lil’ Heiress. What do you think your morayeel will think when I dangle you in front of her, buoy? Think she’ll come running for you?” “Nngh, no fuck no, you can’t, oh fuck,” you whine, and for Fef, you’ll beg, for her you’d do anything. You’d rebelled for her, you’d left everything else you’d ever done behind for her. She’d come running for you in an instant, you know she would and she can’t. She can’t. You couldn’t bear it if she came before she was ready and the Empress speared her right in front of your eyes, and you have a feeling that that is how this will play out if your moirail tries to rescue you right now. “You tellin’ me what to do, buoy?” She yanks at your hair and you jerk in her lap, she makes a pleased groan and nibbles at the tine of one fin. The delicate tips of her fangs run along your earfin but they don’t quite pierce it this time. You’re breathless waiting for the explosion of pain. It’s worse than it would be if she just bit you. This feeling of suspense. “Buckets don’t get to tell anyone what to do.” “Please.” You don’t know what she wants, what she wants you to say. You never cared what anyone besides Fef thought of you, not really and now you don’t know how to make someone do what you want. You don’t know how to charm. How to flatter. You don’t know how to do any of that. “I’m beggin’ ya, please. Fuck. I d-don’t. I’ll do anything you want, so please-!” “Morayeels are such a weakness for a troll.” The Empress’ voice is thoughtful in your ear. You hate the way she laughs, it’s dark and deep and it shudders in you all the way deep inside your bones. Panting, you wait for her to tell her what you can do to save your moirail, maybe just for a little while. At least, you don’t want her to see you like this. You’re a whore, a slut, a bucket for Imperial slurry and you’re dying on the inside. “Moby you can conchvince me not to shark you out like a bucket of chum. Bet your hurt would brig my Heiress swimmin’ right into my graspers, lil’ Ampora. Moby I’ll give you a chance to show me you reelly mean it when you say you’d do anyfin for her. To keep her safe from me.” Her fingers plunge inside your gillslits on your side and you scream, back arching and body tightening around her bulge like you’ve been electrocuted. “Now, spill.” You spill everything over her bulge just the way she said you would, you feel her icy-cold slurry flooding you and settling inside your genematerial sack as your seedflap sucks it up. It’s cold inside you, it’s so cold. When she’s finished, she pushes you off her and you fall on your face down the steps. Putting your hand over your face to your bruised eye, you curl up around yourself like a wounded grub. Everything between your legs is a blur of pain, your gut aches with the fucking slurry the bitch has pumped into you, and you tense as her feet walk past you. Pause. “Don’t forget what you said, sprat. You’re gonna do what I tell you and I won't dangle you out as a lure for your moirail. An' this only lasts as long as you amuse me. Catfish?” What have you done? You stupid, stupid fuck, what have you done? ***** Chapter 2 ***** Chapter Summary Someone else shows up to play with the Condesce's newest pailtoy. Chapter Notes *vomits out sin* You look fucking stupid and you know it, but after the ‘bargain’ you made with the Condesce, you have no room to complain about it. This is what you get for making a bargain with someone who might as well be the Demoness. Or something worse. Fuck. You really don’t know why she hasn’t culled you yet, and the only thing you have to hope for is that as long as you amuse her, she won’t use you to tempt Feferi in to what would be a lost fight, right from the start. Your moirail is nowhere near ready to challenge her Ancestress, not for at least three or four sweeps. So you’ll put up with this hoofbeastshit, and try to be amusing. At least she’d left you alone for a few cycles, your nook feels like it might have gotten back to something like normal after she’d forced more bulge than any troll had a right to deal with up inside it. The hole in your wrist has healed over, your bruises are gone, you’re all better. A nice clean toy for her to play with. You’ve been treated like a prince, and you couldn’t say otherwise. You have a room with a cold salt pool in it, a recuperacoon full of sopor calculated for your blood in temperature and strength (you have sopor, sweet Emissary it’s glorious, you haven’t had proper sopor since you left Alternia), you have exquisite food served on unbreakable plates that you eat with your hands. What you want, no one will give you. You want your moirail ring, and you don’t know where it could have gone after the bitch flung it to a far corner of her throne room. It’s probably been incinerated. You want your scarf; they’re probably afraid you’d strangle yourself with it but it was an ash gift from Kan, you’d never do that. She worked so hard on it, back when she’d been trying to balance you and Vris. It had broken up anyway, in the end but you’d cherished the scarf anyway. Besides, it’s probably been destroyed as well. “Oh, don’t look so glum, dollface.” Your tormentor reaches down from her sprawl on her throne to ruffle your hair, messing up your careful arrangement of your blood-streak. You scowl down at your knees, wanting only two things. A clear headshot of her from a nice long way off and Ahab’s Crosshairs in your hands. Your precious rifle, at least, was safe. Or should be, you hadn’t taken it with you on such a piddly little mission. There really shouldn’t have been any risk. “You hook reel pretty with that lil’ outfit on. Reel cute, sprat.” Yeah, she had to remind you. Even for your blood, you’re currently freezing your globes off in what’s basically hot pink tissue paper and gold links. The gold just makes you colder, freezing links lying against your skin. None of it is actually thick enough to use as a weapon, or able to be thrown or used as a shiv; it’s such flimsy hoofbeastshit. The outfit is almost a straight lift from some concupiscent pailing vid, one with a concupiscent slave motif. Usually this sort of outfit was plastered over a lowblood; you’re pretty sure a director trying this shit on a highblood, especially a seadweller, would get culled. But the Empress gets what the Empress wants, and the Empress wants you in this stupid fucking outfit. Your hips are outlined in hanging arches of fine gold chains with a sash of tissue hiding your sheath from immediate gaze, there’s gold horn rings in graduated spirals of gold from the base to the tip of your horns, covering the sharper tip and turning it into something blunted and dull. Pitiable. Precious. You’ve got some kind of veil-y thing wrapped around your rumblespheres, and secured with gold at your shoulders, gold rings around your upper arms, bracelets on your wrists, more on your ankles. You fucking ring with every step – ok, you always liked gold, you wore a lot of fuckin’ jewellery even for a seadweller but not like fucking this. “Thank you, your Imperial Majesty.” “Aww, there’s the little hissnoodle beast I’ve gotten to pike!” She pinches your cheek like some sort of doting jade from an early Alternia movie with a grub, and you stare at the tiles. Fuck. Everything. You’ve sat here and listened to things that would be so fucking useful, if you ever escaped. Plans, notes, troop movements. That she lets you sit and listen, she thinks you’re never going to escape. That no one is coming to rescue you. Fuck. She’s probably right. “Hook at you, with manners and everyfin. That’s so cute; you’re adorabubble.” Your hands are curled into fists so tight on top of your knees that you’re cutting the inside of your palm with your claws. They’d filed them down into rounded nubs, to fit with this slave fantasy, you guess, but you can still feel the sting as you somehow draw blood. You had managed to keep the make up off your face. That was a small victory, but you would fucking cling to it; it was the only one you’d had. “Mmm, looks like our guest is here,” she announces, and the door to her throne room opens. You’d try and hide behind the monstrosity she’s parked her rump on, but she’s got a good hold of one of your horns. You’re not going anywhere. Trying to curl up and hide as much of yourself as you can, you can’t stop yourself from letting out a thready growl. Fuck! At least when she’d been on her conference calls, you’d been below the level of the viewer. You have nowhere to fucking hide like this; you’re out for anyone to see. “So what’s so fucking important that I have to hop on a shuttle right the fuck away, fishbitch?” Oh. Sweet fucking. Horrorterrors. You don’t know what to call the behemoth that just ducked its head on the way in through the door, long spiralling horns still scraping at the lintel and face painted like an Imperial drone, but you’re frozen to the spot in your stupid little fancy frills and gold jewellery. The back of your pan screams with thoughts of run, adultadultadult, dangerdangerdanger, you’re going to be fucking culled. So much for this promise of keeping her clammy hands off Fef as long as you’re a good fucking boy and keep her amused. “Mah bay! Kurloz, how you been, c’mere and give your spade some sugar.” You shrink against the side of the throne and you must look fucking retarded, staring up as he comes over to do just that. He’s dressed in the clothes of a Subjuggulator and if this is what Gam is gonna grow up and be if he gets the chance, he is going to be monstrous. Oh god, you don’t think you even come up to his grubscars, what is the monstrous bitch fucking planning. You are going to straight up fucking die. He leans down over her, his immense hands with their terrible ridged claws curving around the armrests of her throne as hers reach up to tangle in his hair and their mouths meet like they’re going to war. Fierce, hungry, hard. It’d be hot, if you weren’t in the situation you’re in. If you didn’t know how terrible she is. The sign on his belt buckle, his vest, tugs at your memory, and you glance sideways and down before he thinks you’re staring at him in a way he doesn’t like. He could probably flick your head off your shoulders with two fingers, no need to even grab and tear. “Got a surayprise for ya.” He flicks a glance down at you, and you snarl back as best as you can manage in the ridiculous thing she’s forced you into. God, you hate her. You’ve never hated someone like this so much without it flipping caliginous but it is pure, stone cold platonic loathing. She makes you sick. “So? So, you got some fucked up harem fantasy with one of your saltlickers, ain’t no business of mine. And I have actual fucking work to attend to, I ain’t really in the mood to play around, Meenah.” “Nah, this is the lil miss’s morayeel.” Her hand comes around and grabs your horn, pulling you around as you hiss, to sit between her feet instead of next to her throne. The clown has stepped off for a moment and your knees slam closed as he looks at you, you feel like some lowblood damsel from a shitty romance novel, alone in the hands of the highbloods. With both hands now, she grabs your horns and bends your head back, making you show your throat and you can’t stop from snarling, a low uneasy rumble of useless threat display. You’re as hunched as you can manage, knees together, arms across your chest but she’s got you by the horns and showing your throat. The clown’s looking down at you like you’re shit on his oversized shoes, and you feel a little hate for him too in the midst of the fear. “He hates me so much, ain’t it cute? He’d eat my bilebladder raw if he could, ship’s praycious.” “And again, I fucking say, so what? My wicked hateful fishta, you can’t waste your time on this petty unfunny shit, just cull the little bottomfeeder and be fucking done.” “No, no, watch! Watch this, this is funny as ship.” Her cool, cool hands rub at your horns and it’s just the same temperature as Fef. The hands are bigger but fingertips are pushing into your hornbeds and they’re just the right degree of cool on your skin. You can’t. Oh fuck oh god no. Your growl limps, hesitates and you can almost feel the flip from hate to pale and your acidsack churns as your eyelids droop. She is fucking triggering your submission reflex and it makes you feel dirty and filthy in a way that the fucking hadn’t, she’s taking shit that belongs to Fef and putting her gross fondling hands all over it. “Q-quit it,” you manage to hiss out between your clenched fangs, you can’t take this. You’d said you’d play along but this is completely beyond the fucking designated boundary-markers. It hurts, because you want to be soothed, you want your moirail more than you have wanted anything before and this is a cheap fucking lie. Your body doesn’t care though. It takes the hands on your horns like they’re Fef’s, and gives in. You’re fighting yourself, old instincts that say give in, submit, here’s the one who pities you, they’ll take of you, and you’re losing because oh god, you want to be taken care of right now. “Hnf! F- fuck!” “Just the right sort of cool to fuck his pan into finkin’ I’m his moirail. Bet you I can mako him purr like a catfish.” The immense purpleblood kneels down in front of you and you flinch, you can’t stop yourself. He’s so much bigger and you don’t even have claws right now, just your teeth. You don’t think your fangs would make a dent on his skin. Your squawkblister is torn between purring and growling, you can’t, you can’t handle this, it is making you flip the fuck out, right off the proverbial handle. You can feel it twitching on your face, your pupils zoning in and out of forced- pale as you relax and then tense back into a fear-snarl. He goes to touch your face and you fucking snap, your shark-teeth sink into his thick probing fingers like a closing cholerbear trap. He growls and the deep raging sound goes through you like lightning but the fear just makes you bite down harder. At least her hands have to stop touching you as he just hauls you straight up in the air like a hooked fish. You try to kick at him and one hand grabs your hair as you flail uselessly midair, all the stupid trinkets she had the lowbloods deck you out in chiming and pealing as you kick and thrash. He yanks at your head and you snarl around the mouthful of flesh you have and you are not letting go of your prize, at last you finally got to hurt someone, you’re fighting back and you can feel your earfins go all out and defiant as you taste blood, cool and sour across your tongue. “Don’t just laugh, bitch, get your pet snaptoothbeast off my fuckin’ grasper. Or I swear I’ll rip his jaw off and ruin your new fuckin’ wigglertoy.” “Ha! Lil’ guppy got a mouth on him.” Cold hands work their way along your jaw, squeezing slowly but inexorably at the hinge until your grip pops free and the Subjuggulator can remove his bleeding fingers. He’s staring at you while you glare back, your earfins still cocked and flared to defiant angles despite the agony radiating through your skull as he holds you up by a grip on your hair. “Cute as fuck though. Got a nook on him like a cod damn vice, but he can take definitely take a beatin’. You know what a seatroll can live through.” You colour up as she mentions your nook, and the leering smirk he turns at you makes you spit your mouthful of purple blood right in his stupid painted face. This time he throws you, and you land on your back, skidding on tile and gasping for breath from the impact. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you chant to yourself, and try to turn over, get on your knees. Your head is ringing, you’d chipped tile with your horns as you landed and the gold is making them sting in ways that radiate down through to your pan even if the caps probably saved them from splintering. You’re on your hands and knees as you hear the crisp sounds of heels coming up behind you and you tense all over. “Don’t forget oar d-eel, guppy.” You stare down at the gold and pink tiles between your hands as fuchsia coloured boots come to a stop just within your range of vision and swallow hard. Fef. You’re doing all of this for her. For your moirail. “No, Empress. I ain’t forgot.” Was this the game she was playing this time? Last time she’d just taken, she’d ripped you to pieces and had whatever she’d wanted. This time...were you meant to play along? Act like...what? How were you meant to know if you were amusing her or not? “Got something to say to my hatemate, I fink, sprat.” You hesitate, and her boot nudges you, right in the thoracic struts in a cheap, nasty shot. “Like wwhat?” Fuck. You’re stuttering over your w’s like you’re a wriggler once more, and you cringe as a-fucking-gain, she grabs one of your horns to haul you around and bare your throat, sitting you back on your heels instead of letting you stay on all fours. Makes you look at the clown, and he’s wiped his face clean of his blood and your spit, his scary voodoo paint looks a little smudged at the edges and he’s licking his bitten fingers with a tongue that looks as big as a bulge. Oh fuck, shit. “Apology would be nice.” Her voice is so calm and sure, like she’s a schoolfeeder giving a recalcitrant pupa a lesson. Your guts are all achurn inside you and you can’t help gnawing on your bottom lip as you and the adult male troll lock eyes again. He looks oh so fucking amused, and you. You. You made a deal, and it’s Fef’s life on the line so you give in. She’s so much more important than you, and she’s your fucking moirail, what else could you do? “...sorry.” “Sorry for what, buoy?” “...bitin’.” One of her fingers hooks into the side of your mouth and your eyes go wide, fins flaring as she pulls at the corner of your mouth like you’re a fish she’s hooked on a trawl line. Her claw digs into the inside of your cheek and you cough blood down your chin as she keeps you under control with a hand on your horn, and the other inside your face. “Don’t worry, guppy, we got stuff for big-mouthed wigglers who can’t keep their fangs outta shit.” Her laugh is cold and cruel, and your hands make an abortive move upwards to try and get her hands off you. Drop them into your lap and clench them tight instead. “Ah, that’s betta, buoy. Knew you could bewave if you trayed. So, ‘Loz, how you want this lil’ fish to go and show you how sorry he is?” “Not a motherfucking fan of salt-nook, you know that,” he grumbles, and you can feel yourself drooling as she sticks her fingers deeper into your mouth. Oh. Fucking Emissary, this was humiliating. Your hands flex and tense on your thighs, aching to claw something – not that you’d do any sort of proper job, the way they’d filed them down. Useless nubs, just like Kar’s stupid horns. “Think you pike mine whale enough, clownfish.” “Besides, he reminds me of something. Can’t get my pan quite around what.” She finally takes her fingers out of your mouth as he comes over, takes your chin in his hand and it feels like his fingers almost cup your whole head. His deep purple eyes survey you, you can see the scars on his face underneath the paint from this close and your earfins snap back and closed, tight against your neck. “Seen so many waders, it’s hard. They blur together, all the same proud motherfuckers with their earfins and salt-blood as though it means shit and all to the Church...ah.” He grins, and you want to retch at the miasma of sugar and blood that comes to you off his breath. “The wader who came out with one of the Righteous Unfunny Jokes at me. I think I skullfucked your ancestor, kid, how ‘bout that.” “Reelly? I musta missed that one.” “Orphaner Dualscar Ampora, he was my ancestor,” you say between gritted fangs, because of course you know who your ancestor was. You had his books, his hive, his rifle. His sign on your chest and his blood flowing through your veins. And now you know where you saw that sign before too, it’s Gamzee Makara’s hatchsign and you know who this monster of a Subjuggulator must be too if he’s the one who’s laying claim to the killing of Dualscar. The Grand Highblood. Even the horns matched. Gam, that vacantly smiling sopor-addled addict, was spawned from a bucket of the Grand Highblood’s slurry...shit. He is going to get real fucking big if he gets the chance to measure up to this behemoth in front of you. “And I’m Eridan Ampora, Lord Orphaner a Her Imperial Compassion’s court and my moirail is gonna kick your fuckin’ ass.” “Big words,” the Grand Highblood croons at you, and his smile is terrible and vast with menace, “LITTLE FISH.” Your head is ringing in the aftermath as he roars at you, and you shake your head dazedly. Fuck, you think he’s ruptured something in your aural clots. “Alright, Meenah, you have ensnared my fucking attention. I’ll motherfucking play.” “Knew you would, bay-b.” Because the Empress is a fan of pushing her luck, you watch as she pinches his cheek and then slaps him lightly. He growls back and your stomach drops out somewhere around your knees. “Bereef me, we’re gonna have some swell times.” Both of them look at you with lazy predatory grins, and you cringe inwardly while you keep your face as stiff as a poker. You’d been running on a swell of anger, but now you have to deal with the aftermath of what you just said. You get a feeling that it’s going to be pretty dire. “Pretty blasphemous mouth for a fuckin’ wriggler wearing the clothes of a troll staked out for the satiation and satisfaction of concupiscent desire.” His thumb rubs over your lower lip and you lower your eyes, you’re aching to bite him again and spill more of his heinous landdweller blood. He knows it too, and pushes his dirty thumb in between your lips and over the points of your fangs. The grin he has is just too fucking selfserving, and you let him do what he wants with your mouth while you glare at him. “Lord of something, alright...lord of buckets, maybe. A filial pail all up and thinking it has some right to say something when it ain’t nothing more than something to be motherfucking filled.” The immense troll takes his thumb out of your mouth and you glare at him. He pinches your fucking fin, like you’re some fucking grub. “I got better taste than to want to wear this.” You want to spit in his face, you want to claw his eyes out, you want to kill them both. The platonic hatred you feel seethes in your acidsack, your gallblister, like something alive. It writhes inside you. He snorts and makes a little ohhh sound like a cheerorrorleaderist from an adolescent schoolfeed dramatization, and you hiss at him. You can’t stop the hisses and growls, the way your earfins flick up and out, danger signals that would normally get trolls scurrying out of your way, even if you’re not full adult yet and won’t be until you cocoon for the second time, but them. They just think it’s funny. They think you’re fucking hilarious, and considering what you’re wearing and the size of you against them, you probably are. Like a barkfiend grub thinking that it’s all fucking that, up against a pair of cholerbears. Her Imperial Condescension sits behind your abruptly and pulls you into her lap until your head is cradled against her lush rumblespheres, one hand making sure that your thighs are spread open. You can’t stop the way you’re breathing, hard and heavy and too fucking fast. Your gills are flaring in your sides, on your throat, and you make a snapping glub! as though you were surrounded by water instead of air. The Grand Highblood is watching you like you’re prey and the Empress has you cuddled in her lap like a toy. You’d be a fucking fool not to be afraid and you’re more than a few kinds of fool (example: your current predicament brought on by your own stupidity), but not that kind. “I wanna see you net a taste of saltlicker nook, Kurloz,” she croons over your shoulder, her fins are beating against yours, her hair is a crawling presence on your skin. You want to fucking yank it put by the roots and make her scream in pain, scalp her and use her fins for flags. You hope that Fef really puts her head on a pike. Sticks it out on her starvessel, a trophy, a warning beacon. Rips her horns out and uses them to make Twelthperigee Night decorations. “Bluh. Nah. I’ll motherfucking pass.” “Beach, this is your fucking Empress speakin’ and I spray you gonna lick seadweller nook. I don’t cray if you’re happy aboat it or naut.” Her hand undoes the clasp at the side of the breechclout hiding your intimate parts from full view and you stiffen as the whole thing just slides straight right off your legs, leaving you bare from the waist down except for the anklets jingling near your feet. What the actual fuck. This thing is a fucking travesty, it is something right out a some dopey terribad pailvid. “You know it ain’t gonna be as bad as all that; I only pailed him once so far.” “Probably caught some motherfuckin’ disease, rolling around with lowbloods in the motherfucking gutter, you know they got the fucking Sufferists under their banner.” She hoicks your legs up, your back to her front while her claws dig into the soft skin behind your knees, the back of your head leaning against the Imperial heftsacks as the Grand Highblood lies down on his stomach in front of you. There’s a low drone of a snarl reverberating through your chest, and you couldn’t have stopped yourself if you tried. “Don’t make any kind of sense. I motherfucking grind it under foot, and always it pops back up, I cull and burn and yet again, it rises.” His hands settle on your thighs and you find that you really can tense up more as his breath washes over your bonesheath. You hadn’t thought it fucking physically possible, and yet your muscles find a way to lock even tighter. With his broad hands holding your thighs open, she returns to her amusement of stroking your horns and working her fingers into the beds in a mockery of pale or maybe it’s flush. She probably doesn’t even know which one she’s working for, just thinks it’s funny in the way you twitch. You try to growl, gills flaring nervously as that long, sinuous tongue works its way along your sheath, slow and coaxing. You twitch, and the ornaments you’re covered in chime with every shiver, your toes curling as the Grand Highblood, head of the Mirthful Church and Lead Subjuggulator devotes his attention on opening up your nook with his mouth. He’s going to fucking bite you, you just know it. You’re gonna die. He’s going to bite you, and you’re going to bleed out and you really hope one of the pails you turned in with Vriska and Nektan winds up spawning a grub because you’re never going to get out of this alive to turn in another. He doesn’t bite you. Just the long cool tongue touches you in these intimate places, barely warmer than your own blood, working over and over and over the slit of your nook, teasing your sheath and coaxing your bulge. You don’t know what to feel and your body doesn’t either, it’s thrown between pitch, flush and pale in decreasing arcs that make you feel sick. And shattered. You’re coming to pieces in their hands, and you hear the purpleblood lying between your thighs laugh as your nook starts to open up, tip of your bulge slide from inside your sheath. “Motherfucking wrigglers, easy as a grubburger.” Your gills open and close with a sharp glub! and you want to put your claws straight through his ocular sockets to his thinkpan. He’s so fucking smug, so blasé about what they’re doing to you between the two of them, their fucking toy. Ha, their fucking toy. Oh god, you want to die. You want to stick Ahab’s Crosshairs up one of their nooks, pull the fucking trigger, and then repeat. Attempting to control your breathing, you can’t hold back a chirp as he licks up the length of your bulge, massaging the frill with a curl of his tongue. What the fuck. What the. Fuck! The Grand Highblood is a god damn freak, and you can feel his fangs pressing against your bulge as he licks you in ways that you’re pretty sure you haven’t seen even on the most underground of pailvids. “Sea, all nice and open for you prow,” the hellbeast behind you croons, and you groan in disgust at the gloating tone of her voice, you put your hands down on her thighs and try to pull yourself up, away from her. She keeps you in place pretty easily with the strength she’s got. It wasn’t like you hadn’t been wanting her death before, if you wanted your moirail to live she had to die, simple, but now it’s fucking personal. You will piss on her grave, you will shit in her fucking skull, you want her dead in ways beyond your moirail’s continued existence and you want her fucking deceased. “Licking the fish’s fucking nook is one motherfucking thing, most wickested hatebitch, fucking it is another.” His claws move around the slick entrance to your nook, and you snarl at him. That is some shit you don’t want inside you. No one would. Those claws look as sharp as glubbing hell and you ain’t that fond of pain – at least, not that kind of pain. Not in that kind of place. Her hands replace his to keep you open and stop you from slamming your knees together as he plays with the lips of your nook, stroking the soft skin and menacing the interior with jagged looking claws. “Fuckin’ watch it!” “Oh, fish still got a motherfucking mouth on him?” “Agh fuck!” With her hands holding you open like some pailvid star, you can’t stop him when he slides one finger up inside you. You can feel the tip of his claw tracing over the inside of your nook, inside you and you freeze like you could stop him from cutting you if he wanted to. All it would take is a twitch. “Oh fuckfuckfuck!” “What, you like this, wader?” No, you don’t, who would? Who’d enjoy any fucking part of this?! The bastard adds a second finger and you fight the urge to tense up as much as you can. They’re stretching you apart, making your nook gape as he widens them as much as he can. It hurts, he’s not being gentle and careful about it but you don’t think he’s cut you yet. “Look at you open up. Just as easy as the fucking bitch behind you.” “Hoy, hoy. None of that glubbin’ ship. I ain’t no ho.” “You like a little motherfucking clown bulge all up and in you, a little paint in your kisses, best of fishbitches. Don’t lie.” They’re flirting over your fucking head. You don’t know whether that’s more or less insulting than the fact that they haven’t tied you at all. Your blunt claws are rasping against the Empress’ thighs uselessly as she holds yours open for the leering clown in front of you, and he’s not touching you at all, except for his fingers inside your nook. “Oh, my sweet fucking Emissary,” you laugh in a strained way, because none of this is funny in the fucking slightest. This is what you were afraid of? These two? And you know that this is a façade, these private selves don’t take away from how dangerous they are outside of here. But. “Do you even fucking listen to yourselves, oh my fuck, you sound like you’re eight sweeps at the fucking most.” “Rude little sprat,” the Empress accuses in her low crooning voice, and her fangs sink into your fin in a punishing bite, punching holes right through the thin veil of flesh between supporting tines. You sit up almost electrified in her lap and let out a choked sob as the clawed fingers in your nook dig in. You sink back against her and they uncrook, stroke instead of claw, and you hate them both so much you could tie them out for the sun. “Ow, ok, fuckin’ ow, I’m sorry,” you hiss out between clenched fangs and the clown’s fingers leave your nook in a slurping messy sound that you cringe to hear. You’re soaking, and it ain’t like it’s just blood. A lot of it is your slurry, and you’re disgusting, you don’t know what to call this, it ain’t flush and it ain’t pitch but you’re reacting just the same. You slut. Desperate to fill a fucking pail, and your body knows it, it’s weak and you’re a concupiscent hire. A cheap one. Fuck all a this shit. “Oh, you can’t be fuckin’ serious, that ain’t gonna fit.” The Grand Highblood is pushing down his pants, and the long writhing bulge he reveals is. Well. You’re not sure if it’s bigger or smaller than Her Imperial Condescension’s on an equivalent mass basis, but you suppose at least it’s in the fucking singular rather than her horrorterror nest of daymares made flesh. You still don’t want it in your nook. You kick out at him to try and fend him off, and then freeze as the Condesce’s fangs prick the back of your neck in a warning bite. She could take out the whole back of your neck this way; either kill you or leave you as some sort of vegetative floppy doll. You don’t like either option. “Nah, guppy. C’mon, be a good buoy.” Her mouth kisses the side of your throat to remind you of how vulnerable you are, and you stifle a scream by grinding your back teeth hard; what else can you do? You made a deal. You have to keep it, it’s for your moirail. She might be lying, she might be not, you just have to hope that she isn’t lying straight to your face. “C’mon. Beg f’r him. He’s got a bulge like you ain’t never had before. Beg like I got your morayeel on a hook, ocray? Which I fuckin’ do, beach.” You make a strangled sound, part rage, part fear, as she says what you’ve just been thinking. With Fef, you’re on a fucking hook and you’re twisting. She can do what she likes, get you to play whatever role she wants. You stare down the clown’s bulge like it’s a natural disaster, and try to figure out how to beg in a way that the bitch behind you would enjoy. Something that would see you crawling on your belly like a limp dirtnoodle, no doubt. Fuck. You’re. You’re not good at this, but you better figure something out right the fuck now. “Ffuck. I’m not. I’m not good at this,” you warn her, thinkpan scrambling for something to say. How do you convince someone you want them to pail you when what you really want to do is bathe in scalding hot water with lavish amounts of soap until you can’t feel their hands on your skin anymore? You just want to wash them off. Especially off your horns and your cheek, those disgusting fucking pale mockeries the bitch is putting you through. As if you didn’t have a fucking serendipitous moirail, you need her fake-ass pity instead. “I.” He’s stroking his bulge in his hand, it’s twisting around his fingers, oh fuck, it’s glubbin’ huge and you’re gonna die. He’s just gonna straight up pail you to death. “I want it, ok? Just...put your bulge in me, or whatever.” “Oh, bayb, that was sad.” She rubs her face against the side of yours, both of your fins beating against the other’s, and you hear her sigh. She sounds like she’s so sad, so exasperated, and you almost. Almost. Want to make her happy. Only you don’t because she’s a fuckin’ sea witch, and you want her fucking dead. “You ain’t conchvincin’ no baydy here.” “I ain’t used to this kind a shit,” you hiss, and rein yourself back in, get yourself under control. Alright. Got to be cool. Got to go along with this, got to convince this fucking clown you want to be split open like the pailing slave you’re dressed as...he is god damn drooling, that is disgusting. “...ain’t like I usually have to fuckin’ beg someone to pail me.” That’s not entirely true, but you can’t do this when he’s looking at you like you’re some funny joke, mouth all a big grin under the paint and a glitter in his eyes that you want to claw out. You squirm back on the Condesce’s lap and hear your gills do that glub thing again. Fuckin’ embarrassing. “Just put it in, already.” “Yeah, I ain’t motherfucking buying it yet, wriggler.” “I want to claw your fuckin’ eyes out, is that wwhat you wwanna hear,” you hiss in a fit of near-suicidal temper, fangs bared and your earfins flare straight out, hard and high. Danger, danger, highblood in a rage. You hate them both, and this is going to hurt. If you can get yourself falling pitch, maybe it. Maybe it won’t be so bad. “Get that fuckin’ disgustingly oversized bulge in me before I make you eat it.” Reaching down between your legs, you spread your nook with two shamefully nubbed claws and make yourself relax back against the Condesce like she’s your favourite armchair, her cold skin making you want to puke. You should never have felt this chill on you in anything concupiscent, not ever, and you’re starting to think you might be better off dead than rescued. “C’mon, clown. Fuckin’ break me, if you think you’re hard enough.” The Subjuggulator looks almost gobsmacked for a moment, and then he roars with laughter. Your breath comes in short harsh pauses, watching him and keeping the sneer on your mouth as he kneels down, still laughing and leering at you like you were some easily disposed of pail slave from some ancient historivid. Spreads your knees further apart with both his hands and his bulge slaps up against the inside of your thigh; you keep your fingers where they are, exposing all the soft insides of your nook. Keep your angry gaze on his amused eyes, while the soft chuckle of the Empress is crooned into your auricular clot. You hate them both so much. Purely platonic and nothing more, but if they take it as something else, you’ll fuckin’ take it. Maybe they’ll get stupid. Maybe. You don’t know. You don’t want to die yet; as long as you’re alive, Fef is probably too. You hope. You hope. “That I can motherfucking get behind, little fish.” The first touch of him inside you makes you shudder, and you don’t need to keep your fingers there for long as the thick bulge ripples inside you. Squirms its way deeper, stretching soft tissue aside unmercifully until you’re gritting your fangs and panting, gills flared and every part of your fins lifted and spread. And it still continues, more and more of it coiling up inside you until the tip is pressing on your genesphincter, imponderable bulk squeezing against your shameglobes. You don’t know which is worse, the slow squirming invasion of the Condesce’s horrornest of bulges, or the inexorable advance of the Grand Highblood’s stupidly large yet singular bulge. Both. Both are bad. “Feeling full enough yet, wader?” he croons at you and you hiss, snarl, croon out a pitch flirting chirp and you see his little tiny earfins flare in the depths of his knotted, tangled hair. Something glow in the depths of his eyes. He is killing you, you’re breaking apart but you calm yourself down, ignore the split and stretch that’s happening between your thighs as he presses closer. Crams another inch inside your already stuffed nook. He is going to come out your fucking mouth, you know it’s impossible but that is how you are feeling right now. “I said, fuckin’ bring it, you glubbin’ landdweller,” you snarl back and then shudder all over as a cold hand grasps your bulge, ringed fingers stroking the length of it and one fuchsia-tipped talon toying with the frill running along the underside. You really wish she wouldn’t touch you. The cold is confusing, and you really hate it in the most platonic way possible. “F-fuck!” Something is squirming underneath your ass. Fuck. Everything. In. Your. Life. “Here, take him,” the bitch behind you and pushes you into the clown before either of you could frame a no. You grunt as this makes his bulge shift around inside you, your knees landing a little awkwardly on his muscular thighs, catching yourself with your hands on his shoulders as you hear her bodysuit unzip. Biting him is so, so tempting but you just manage to keep yourself from doing it and setting fangs to his throat, you fucking behave like a good boy. Your bulge coils against your stomach as his hands settle heavy on your ass and then you try to push back as you feel something cold and wriggling between your glutes and against your wastechute. “Hey, what the fuck,” you snarl, and you can hear your voice breaking as the Condesce bites the back of your neck and cosies up against your back. Your breathing gets more laboured, and you are already full up inside with this ridiculously immense clownbulge, no one could expect you to take fucking more. No one, except apparently Her Imperial Condescension. Because that cold touch isn’t the last, and you grit your teeth and dig your fingers into the armour plates on the Grand Highblood’s shoulders. “That fuckin’ ain’t –“ “You poor uncultured lil’ grub.” She’s fuckin’ laughing at you, like your horror at the idea of being pailed in the wastechute isn’t completely reasonable. That is an egress, not an ingress. This is going to hurt so much. Nothing is meant to go in there. “You’re gonna like it, so shut up and fuckin’ take it.” Up until now, you haven’t really screamed. With her fangs in your shoulder and her horrorbulge forcing its way up your wastechute, you fucking scream the way you’re pretty sure she wants you to. With the way her hand is knotted in your hair and pulling your head back so she has full access to your throat, forcing vulnerability on you and then the clown decides to take her up on the fucking offer so both sides of your throat has its own pair of fangs sunk in, she is making sure that you can’t shut your mouth on anything. You scream like a god damn wiggler getting culled by a drone and you hate yourself but you can’t stop. Every breath goes straight into fueling more screams, and you’re hurting, you’re dying. You think that everything inside your abdomen, your thorax, has been replaced with their fucking bulges. There couldn’t be room for any of your organs in there, not between the two of them. They’re both adult, full grown, centuries, millennia, tall and broad, too strong for you to handle and oh god, it fucking hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts. Compared to them, you ain’t nothing and you know it. You can hear them crooning at each other, trading hateflirtations and barbed nothings over your skin, as though they weren’t buried inside you to the root and splitting you into terrible pieces. You had called it when you said you were going to be pailed to death; between the two of them, they’re going to manage it. Oh fuck, you’re really measuring up to your Ancestor here. At least, you suppose, you ain’t getting a bulge through the fucking ocular socket. You’re just going to bleed out when they finish using you as their pail and remove their stupidly immense bulges. Still, your stupid fucking bulge hasn’t retreated any and you chirp helplessly as someone’s fingers find it, fondle it, like you could be made to get to orgasm in the middle of this much pain. You shouldn’t say that, the Condesce had made you spill while she had her fingers jammed up to the knuckle inside your gillslits and her abomination of a bulge ripping your nook to shreds. Ain’t like you can be surprised now if she still gets you over the line. You almost wish she would, at least it would let you fucking escape some of this. Everything inside your body is pressure and fullness almost to the point of bursting. You’re surprised that you haven’t exploded, just in a far corner of your mind, some part of you that is observing everything that is going on while you drool and cry and scream and bleed. While you disgrace yourself. You are a poor excuse of a troll, let alone a noble one. You are so fucking weak, you deserve to be culled. “Just raylax, guppy, you ‘eelin’ reel good around my bulge rayght prow,” the Empress croons into your ear, seadweller harmonies curling around your pan like you should feel soothed, and not feeling comforted is a betrayal in some basic part of you. Oh fuck. You’d almost wish Fef wasn’t your moirail, just so this would stop fucking with you, the sound, the cold, the touch on your skin. You blink back frustrated tears, and just moan instead; you hope she ain’t waiting for some sort of rational answer. You don’t have one to give. “Nice an’ tight, nnnn, just a pitch perfect lil’ pail...” You hope Fef nails her right to the fucking wall. She better. Oh god. You choke as something squirms even deeper inside you and feel your eyes widen so hard they hurt. Oh god. Someone just kill you right now, you don’t care anymore, you want to die, you want to die, but you can’t, you gotta hold on, gotta keep amusing the Empress, keep her off your fucking moirail. You gotta. So you do. It’s amazing what you can live through when you try. When her fingers play with your gills in the most delicate and flush approved way and his hand strips your bulge in the harshest kind of black, you chirr and trill and fucking come all over the both of them in a welter of violet. You’re barely conscious as they snarl and argue their way to a climax inside both of your orifices. And you’re fucking glad of it. The less you know about it all, the fucking better. You’re a doll, a limp plaything between them as their bulges retract and you sprawl on the floor in a pool of mingled slurry, violet, tyrian, purple. All the highblood shades. This strikes you as funny for some Emissary known reason and you start to laugh, wheezing and quiet but it makes the clown pull your face out of the puddle. You weakly spit in his face, and he pats your cheek before dropping your head so it slams into the floor and leaving you to curl up like the wounded grub you fucking are. Everything below your waist feels ripped to shreds, you are a chasm, a god damn void. You’re leaking slurry like a broken bucket and the last thing you hear before you black out is her quiet husky voice and his braying laughter. You bet when you wake up, you’re really going to wish you’d fucking died when they’d been pailing you. ***** Chapter 3 ***** The Condesce had been entirely right with what she’d told you; they did have a way of keeping the fangs of big mouthed wrigglers who can’t keep their teeth to themselves out of shit. This is why you are currently choking over a thick length of purple bulge, as it squirms down your throat and seems headed directly down to fuck your aeration sacks. Your fangs are blocked by a ring of some pliable sort of rubber, and you can’t bite down, because underneath that gummy rubber you’re biting into is something much harder. Your mouth is stretched open and there’s no way to close your jaws, you just have to take it. You gag, throat revolting against the squirming pressure sliding down your pipes and it just makes the immense Subjuggulator enjoying the cool wet slide of your windchute sigh and grip tighter at your horns. You wish you had fucking nubs or something spiked, anything that they wouldn’t use as fucking handlebars to hold you in place so they can fuck your fucking face. You have never before this regretted the shape of your horns before; you'd thought they were kinda fucking dashing in fact but now you'd do almost anything to have something else. He pulls out and you gasp for breath, your gills flaring uselessly in the dry air. Your chin is wet with drool and slurry and you glare at him through teary eyes, hating the way you know you must look, and the shameful burn of impotent rage in your acid sac. You’re naked on your knees in front of him, and he’s sprawled on the steps of the Condesce’s dais, his shoulders leaning back against her legs as she works her hands over his horns. First time you met him, they’d outright called each other spade and acted so black, and now. Now it’s almost pale, it’s utterly revolting. No wonder the Imperial Fishbitch sees no problem with smearing quadrants every fucking which way with you, if this is the way she treats someone she’s known for centuries, actually seems to have some modicum of respect for, and you’re nothing. You’re a toy, you’re their fucking pail. They’ve proved it to you beyond any shadow of a doubt. You want to throw up and you gag, strings of violet drool and purple geneslime sliding down your chin from your blocked mouth, but you don’t dare take the ring out. Not until they take it out themselves. Your hands are free, the hideous disgraceful thing ain’t tied to your head in any way, but you. Fuck, they’re destroying you. You’re turning into their tame barkbeast and every time you flinch, if you try to pull back from an order, the Condesce reminds you exactly how tightly she’s tied her leash around your throat. How deep her claws can cut into you, the part of you that has all your pale feelings clustered together, every thought, every impulse you’ve ever had about Fef, and then she yanks. Little nudge, little hint, a murmur about ‘morayeels’. She thinks she’s so fucking subtle, it makes you wanna puke every organ inside you out your fucking mouth to splatter on her gloriously tiled floor with its seacreatures and flecks of gold. She’s about as subtle as a fucking shark. Less. Even a shark would have more subtlety than her in its blind attacks, maybe it would even circle a little before delivering the fatal blow. Still, as long as you don’t actually see Fef, hear a word about her because you don’t think that the sea bitch could keep herself from shoving it in your face that she’s culled her, you can kinda delude yourself into still having hope. Her hands cup the Grand Highblood’s cheeks, and rub soothingly, and he purrs, the thick purple bulge twisting against his thighs leaving dark smears of genetic material on his near ebony skin. And then when he tilts his head back, laying his cheek against her thigh and leaving smears of greasepaint on her black bodysuit, they kiss almost flush, while her hands are still on his fucking cheeks, acting something close to pale. It’s obscene. You avert your eyes and try not to drool too obviously; you’re failing at it. You can feel the wet on your chin and down your throat. In the next instant, a big hand closes around your horn and drags you closer, pulling you towards her lap this time as she unzips her bodysuit, opens it up to reveal the wet dream of a billion trolls, the Empress’ Imperial rumblespheres, all the way down her thorax, her abdomen, down to her boneshield, her nook. That gloriously scarred, well muscled body, the hips that launched a thousand fucking ships. The beauty standard of the Empire. You hate her so platonically it makes your acid sac burn, your bilebladder twist, as his hand grabs at the back of your head and tightens its grip in your hair, her hands on your fucking horns now and you bend your head under the pressure, her anemone-like bulge squirming, every tentacle fighting to be the first one inside your mouth. Your throat revolts and you put your hands on her thighs, trying to pull back as both pairs of hands force you down. They crawl, they creep inside your mouth, cold as the depths and you choke, you’re dying, your gills are opened wide on your sides and your throat, fins spread in panic as you try to push at her thighs harder, feeling your throat convulse around the slick wiggling things. Between the two of them, it’s more than enough to hold you down. One of them could probably do it just fine, but the Subjuggulator behind you grabs your arms and bends them back, making your shoulders ache as he holds your wrists together behind you with one hand. They liked to remind you how helpless you are against them, how small. It ain't like you've fucking forgotten in the pauses in between pailing. When he's not here, she doesn't feel as inclined to play, you get some rest, but he's here now and it's been a few nights of all fucking this and this kind a scurrilous nonsense. You feel the thick bulge of him squirm up against your rump and you make a strangled noise but you’re more than just pinned, you feel your throat try to gag as another tentacle joins its mates down your tubes, and his other hand is spreading your cheeks apart to press the tip of his bulge against your wastechute. The struggles you put up are weak, you’ve got no leverage, no power to resist and you grunt around the mess of bulges invading your throat and trying to fuck your eyes through your closed eyelids. You can’t breathe. You can’t breathe. They’re blocking your nose, trying to wriggle in there too and your gills are flared open in the choking air and you can only feel your vision go dark around the edges, sparkle like the wiggler sparksticks you and Fef had bought one summer night and played at making spitting trails of light so bright it almost burned your eyes through the air. Tracing words and promises of being moirails forever. Oh fuck, you want her, you want that soothing cool without the fucked up chicanery that the Condesce wants to put you through so you can get that empty scrap of affection that she holds out, as though this, all of this, was maybe something you wanted. You want all of this, everything that has happened, to have not happened. Your body protests the use it is being put to with spasms of pain, but that isn’t new. Now. You’ve not quite lost track of time, but you’re not entirely sure of how many nights it’s been, how many cycles, not to a precise count. Sometimes they hurt you so much you black out, your body or your mind deciding to tap out, take a coward’s surrender on experiencing everything they want to do to you. Because they do what they want. They do what they fuckin like. And if the Condesce wants to treat her Grand Highblood to some quadrant smearing, flipping fuckery of a ‘relationship’ that swings between pale and black, between conciliation and concupiscent like a wriggler’s toy balancing beam, then she can. They obviously like it, it works for them, oh god, you want Fef so bad you can taste it. You just want to curl up with your head in her lap like you’re some fucking grub and let her pet your hair and stroke your horns. Something so pale and pure and sweet, so fuckin sweet, it would be nothing like this bitch, these monsters pailing you have ever experienced in all their fucking sweeps. They ain't got no idea what real fucking pale pity is like. Or real hate neither. Someone fucking help you, you can't fucking breathe. She pulls out before you choke to death on her fucking bulge like the worst kind of pailing vid but he's still in you, immense bulge squirming in places where nothing was meant to fucking penetrate, not fucking ever. It hurt the most the first time, but it still ranks right up there as fucking agonizing. With the amount of pheromones they're both pumping out, your bulge is still interested and you're half-unsheathed, nook a little flushed, as much as you'd hate to admit it and you hope that they continue to fucking ignore. You gag and choke, almost vomit as her tendrils pull out of your throat with a sickening wet sliding sound and you'd let your head hang, but she's still got a hand on your horn, holding your teary eyed face up for her consideration. You are too busy trying to suck oxygen into your aeration sacks to bitch, or glare and you can't swallow anywhere close to enough of the drool escaping at the corner of your lips around the rubber gag. "Hey, Kurloz." "Motherfucking what, my most wickedest fucking fishta?" His voice is a low growl, obviously dissatisfied to be pulled from thought of what he was doing, the tight clench of your fucking wastechute around his bulge, that bastard. He's fucking greedy, but more easily satisfied than her. She's almost always the one that comes up with the new ideas. New games. You wish you hadn't been here long enough to know that. How long has it even been? Sometimes it felt like fucking forever. You wish you'd stayed fucking complacently ignorant about so fucking much about the two of them (you want your moirail, you want your moirail). "You still got that wave with needles that you had that tide you did my fins?" Something cold blossoms in your gut at her thoughtful tone, the way she looks down at you. Considering something, no doubt, something fucking terrible, something you ain't gonna like one fucking bit. Something that was gonna hurt, was gonna hurt so fucking bad. Barely any of you was thinking about it, mostly you were too busy choking, but some little corner of your mind sat up at her words and took fearful notice. You hate it when she gets that tone of voice, it always hurts more for you in the end. It means she thinks she's gonna have some reel fuckin fun. "Sure." His thick claws dig into your hips and her hand grips your chin, holding your face in place as she wipes the corners of your mouth with the edge of her thumb, like she was doing you a favour. As though she was doing something kind. Not as though she fucked you over to begin with, and you're still choking for breath, chest heaving. Your mouth tastes like slurry, and it's a taste you think you could have done without getting. At the very fucking least, you don't want to taste theirs. "You want to put a few more motherfucking holes into this little fucking bucket of yours?" She takes the ring out of your mouth and you're still drooling. You swallow and gasp, and she wipes your mouth again, treating you like a fucking grub as her partner in crime pulls you back into his lap, right onto his fucking bulge so you let out a little grunt of pain as he makes sure you take every grubleg length of him inside you. You can feel it coiling inside you in places that weren't never fucking meant to be touched, never meant to be invaded like this and it hurts, you shift a little to try and ease it, it's instinctual but it makes him moan and bite at your neck and you stiffen up in disgust which just makes the moan deeper. Louder. They're fucking animals. God, they disgust you. You disgust yourself. "If you want to do that, we're gonna need to tie him the motherfuck down," the clown continues in his gravel and tar voice, bulge rootdeep inside you and you have to fight yourself to concentrate on anything else but the torturous squirm of his bulge in your fucking wastechute, but you're listening now. Oh, this ain't good. This really sounds like an idea you ain't gonna like in the slightest. In fact, you're pretty sure you're gonna regard it with the most platonic of fucking hate. "When I put a hole in a motherfucker, I want to put in the fucking holes I mean to, not extra because he's flopping around like a beached finbeast." "Yeah, I getcha point, buoy, don't overdo it. Clam down." "So, what you thinking about, my finest fucking finfaced sea witch?" "Atoll'd him before, thought he'd hook pretty good in my glubbing colours." She reaches out to pinch your fin, pulling it to make it fan out for her delectation despite the way it's instinctively pinned down and tight to the side of your head, and you hiss through clenched fangs, digging your claws into your thighs. The smirk on her face is nauseating. This is your body you're talking about, and while you might have worn a boatload of rings on your fingers before you had to sell them, you had never gone in for piercings. Not your style. Guess they were your fucking style now. "We can put some in. I even got just the things. Somefin special." She stands up, naked and her bulges squirming lazily against her thighs like a hungry anemone searching for food. All you want to do is puke, every swallow you manage to choke down tastes like slurry and it's not sitting well on your stomach. "Come on. We'll move this to my platform." "As a wicked bitch says," he agrees, and it's not like they're interested in your opinion. You're the pail. Who asks the pail if it wants to be moved from one room to another? It ain't like you have much of a choice in anything that's going on anyway, the Empress makes sure you're aware of how powerless you are every moment. Every fucking microsecond, you have to be absolutely certain of your powerlessness, your vulnerability and how much she can do to hurt you, because of how much pity you hold your moirail in. Fuck, you miss Fef. At this point, you miss all of them, even Vris to an extent. At least when she hurt you, you were expected to hurt her back and you could. You could hurt these two assholes as well, but you don't really fucking dare and what kind of fucking lunacy is that, that you are frightened (not frightened, something else, wary, maybe, concerned, god, sometimes you wished you were stupider or braver or something) about hurting someone because of the consequences. But it's. She's. You can't risk her hurting Fef, if you could maybe do something to stop it. He grinds in deeper into your ass, and you choke as something in your gut clenches around the tip of his bulge in a painful contraction. "But give a motherfucker a chance to finish." "Nah, that'd just be a mess." She leans over you to smack at his cheek, you're pretty sure that's what she's doing from the little crisp sound of flesh on flesh. Something a little more violent than a pap. His fingers tighten on your hips and you hiss through your fangs, a controlled exhalation. You used to run your mouth, you used to take pride in finding a way to say the simplest thing in the most convoluted way, like that made you better than anyone else around you. Like it showed off how intelligent you were, how cultured. How much better you were than everyone else. You used to want to be noticed. You don't anymore. "Come on, clownfish. Up and at 'em." He pulls himself from your body with a grumbling roil of obscenities, cursing her as you go down on your elbows. You're not allowed to stay down, picked up by one elbow and pulled along on feet that don't want to work towards her respiteblock and her concupiscent platform. For some reason, you don't wind up there nearly as much as you might think you would have, if you could ever have predicted this. This whole fuckin' thing. The clown gets sick of what he probably considers your lollygagging and picks you up by the back of your neck, before pretty much throwing you over a shoulder. The breath gets knocked out of you with a grunt as you're draped over a broad slab of muscle and you're smart enough (beaten down enough) now not to struggle. Your reward for your good behaviour as the beast carries you is to be thrown down onto her platform and tied there. The surging way you're breathing makes you feel like you're choking as they talk over your head, her voice higher and lighter than his, that deep rumble that shakes all the way through your body, reminding you of how weak and fucking empty you are. You have no place to stand, no way to push back, no way to defend yourself. And now your hands are cuffed to the headboard and your ankles to the footboard, spreading you out like a patternwing bug to a killing board. You're stretched out and open in an exhibit for their pleasure, and you can't stop your gills from flaring or your fins from flicking forward hard in useless threat display. Even when you know there ain't no fuckin' point, you've never been able to control your fins. She sits her gargantuan ass down next to you, platform bouncing, and starts to pet and stroke across your vestigial grubscars, rubbing a thumb over them before delving between your legs. You gotta say, having an immense bulge shoved into your chute and her fucking hideous mess of crotchtentacles direct into your aeration sacks doesn't make you exactly frisky and ready to play, so she has to work at it to get your bulge out and your nook wet. For once. You are - you don't want to admit that you're terrified, but you really fucking are. What are they going to do to you? They keep right on talking over your head as you squirm, pinioned between them and the restraints as he pulls out this little case. Black leather. Purple symbol. The curving looping strangeness of the Makara sign, one you'd thought of as something of a friend's once, and it's poisoned for you forever now. As if you're gonna see Gam again, oh fucking cod, you're so stupid. You're gonna die here. You should never have trusted that fucking dirtblood. Stupid, stupid, stupid. They put holes in you. They put gold in you. He holds you open and she spreads your nook and you hiss, you sob like you're gonna choke on the gasping inhalation, as he punches holes in the sides of the guarding bits of skin around the entrance to all your inner parts and slides gold hoops through them. And then he gets started on your bulge while you're sobbing and trying to twist and buck, trying uselessly to escape the pain. Even with everything that's gone on, you hadn't known that everything between your legs could hurt this much. When he pierces your bulge, after pretty much pulling it out of you where the sensitive appendage had almost completely re-sheathed when he pierced your nook, he uses a strange curved needle, and the hoops he uses are more like half-moons, crescents, the outer curve almost flush with the outer surface of your bulge. What is that even going to feel like when you sheathe? Are you going to be able to? You're fucking maimed, you ain't ever heard of nobody doing shit like this to their body. When he's done with between your legs, he spreads out your earfins and punches them straight up full of gold too. Tight little rings of gold with fuchsia jewel chips in them. The ones on your nook and your bulge are simply smooth gold thank cod, you don't want to think about how much it would hurt to have chips of jewels scratching up the inside of your sheath. The gold was making you worry enough. You're carrying a ransom's worth of gold in your body when he finishes wiping away your blood from the little piercings. It feels like your skin is aching, from between your thighs up your body to centre in a dull hornache at the bases of your keratin. Oh fuck. Fuck. You just want to curl up somewhere and try to heal, but you ain't know if they're gonna let you. "Look how pretty y'are, guppy," she croons with sadistic fucking delight, and wraps her fingers around your bulge, stroking you. You whimper like a scalded grub at her touch, hips bucking and trying to roll away; it hurts so much, a blinding flash of pain that devastates you like a bolt of lightning entering direct through your pan and radiating out to every part of your body. The world is agony as she touches you, in ways that you've never felt before, despite everything she's done. Everything she's thought of before this. "Guess we'll have to stick to your chute and your mouth until all these heal up, mm? Don't want ship gettin' infected or nofin. That'd be a reel pain." The fact that she's pretending she even cares has you fuming in the useless fucking way that is the only way open to you now considering the situation, until there's something cold and damp touching you between your legs and everything that's aching suddenly turns to fire oh sweet fuckin' merciful fates! You shriek breathlessly and keep trying to thrash as the clown rubs something over every piercing, making sure to rotate the hoops in your nook, and try to slide under the ones in your bulge, and get underneath every part. It burns, it burns, oh cod, it burns! Your bulge tries to resheath, you can feel it tugging against his fingers as he holds it stretched out, your hips bucking as you try to give it the room to withdraw into your body. He slaps your hip, and it barely makes an impact in how much every fucking other thing hurts. "Done," he pronounces over you, and you writhe in the restraints as you hiccup, try to catch your breath, you can hear your gills snapping, opening, snapping closed again. You're in so much fucking pain. It can't get worse than this. "Motherfuckin’ finally." Haha, oh cod, why do you ever bother to think that? They always find some way to make it worse, it's like they can hear you. As best you know, they fucking can't. Ain't like that kind of mind control shit that Vris could pull was available much out of her caste. Ain't like there was a lot of psychic abilities any higher than her, that was kind of a lowblood thing. But you're left gasping, feeling your bulge retract inch by inch by inch, the hoops dragging along the inside of your bonesheath. Rubbing. While he throws your knees up over his shoulders and reintroduces his bulge to your chute, forcing himself inside with deep rocking thrusts as your eyes water from the sheer strangeness, the wrongness of something other than your bonebulge drawing itself back into your body. Feeling every ring. Every bump. Amazingly, it distracts you from how wrong it feels to have his bulge up your chute. How truly fuckin' impressive. You hadn't thought that was even possible, but all you can think of is how every ridge of a hoop feels as your bulge retracts. You can't think, your head is spinning. Fuck. Fuck. Oh fucking fates, it's like it's rubbing at the inside of your sheath even when your bulge is still. You hiccup out a sob and try to writhe on the bed, tossing your head uselessly in something that you think was meant to be a threat. He pails you like an avalanche, it's never ending and seismic. You feel like your body is disintegrating around you, withering away in the pain. Something cool lands in droplets on your face, and you open your eyes, not having noticed they'd closed. He's drooling on you. He's fucking. Like a barkbeast, he's drooling on you, drops of saliva slipping around his fangs, down his chin and down onto your face. You can't even put your hands up to block it, they're still tied back to the backrest of her platform as he thrusts into you, pails your chute like it was meant to take it. Right now, all you feel is tired. You can't. You just can't. You're sore and aching, and your face is getting drops of vaguely purple saliva dripped over it. The pain of your bulge resheathing the last grublegwidth make your eyes roll back, and you. Very thankfully. Pass out. When you wake, you're back in the cell. Your thighs are stained with purple and fuchsia streaks, you feel too full and too empty all at once, and everything below your waist is a dull ache. You haven't hurt this much since the first time they both pailed you together, one in your nook and the other in your chute. In fact, you think this is worse, somehow. Everything is just a dull throbbing pain of too much, and over-used flesh letting you know it doesn't appreciate the use to which it's been put. Good. You don't either. You're meant to be. You should be. You're an Orphaner, and you served your Empire the best way you knew how, and looked to your quadrants for the rest of it. Fuck, you hope Fef puts this bitch's head on a pike soon. You're so fucking done with this. Curling up on the pile of cushions, you tuck a hand between your legs against your sheath like it can help the pain and close your eyes. Maybe if you sleep, you can ease this off a little. You don't want to wake again for the world. Not for any, not for your homeworld, not for one made outta pure fuckin' platinum and jewels. You just want to wake and for this to be over with, some sort of terrible dream brought on by sleeping dry and getting horrorterror tentacles up inside your slumbering pan. It ain't, and you know it, but maybe for a moment or two - you can pretend that it is. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!